January 20, 2008:  CALLED AND GIFTED
John 1:19-20, 29-42; 1 Corinthians  1:4-9; Psalm 40:1-11
                                         Eileen Parfrey  -- Springwater Presbyterian Church                                         

            This town is so small, until recently you were considered a newcomer unless your grandparents were born here.  Old-timers used to say, “Anyone with get-up-and-go got up and went,” but that changed when the freeway made the commute into the city so easy that anyone with get-up-and-go was now building a house out on the edge of town, and expecting Herman to serve coffee with the fry cakes they picked up on their way out of town every morning, instead of making it themselves and drinking it at the breakfast table while they listened to corn futures on the radio, the way God intended coffee to be served.
           This was before people began to expect flavored coffee, a demand Herman was mercifully spared by retiring in 1995.  Having learned the bakery trade in CCC camps in northern Wisconsin during the Depression, his shop was a danger zone.  A new pastor eats too many fry cakes, and the resulting poundage might make her consider cutting back at potlucks, thus incurring hurt feelings over hot dishes.  I’d made an exception to meet someone at Herman’s, a man we all called The Dugger, the “Wilbur” on his baptismal certificate notwithstanding.   The Dugger started life as a farm boy, faithfully working the classic oats-alfalfa-corn rotation, but it was his backhoe business of small excavation and drainage jobs around the county that were his real bread and butter.  Once a week, The Dugger met the high school kids from the church at Herman’s bakery to, as he said, “talk God.”  It wasn’t youth group, he hastened to add.  If the kids wanted activities or Bible lessons, they could go to church.  And they did, thanks to his Thursday afternoons.  For the record, though, The Dugger was just helping out his old pal, Herman, who claimed that, come Thursday afternoon, he needed to clear out the week’s inventory to make room for the weekend trade, so the kids ate nickel donuts and “day-old” fry cakes still warm from the fryer. 

            The youth were boiling out the door of the bakery as I arrived, and their calls of “Hey, Pastor Sparky” were still ringing as I sat down across from The Dugger.  “Sparky” had replaced my own baptismal “Martha,” a sly reference to our first Ash Wednesday service together, when I had invited these good folks to prepare for Lent by writing their burdens on a piece of paper, lighting said paper at the Christ candle on the communion table, and placing their burdens, figuratively still burning, in the loving hands of God.  Except that the burdens of this town resisted such a neat solution, and the fire-proof tray invited smoldering ash to float through the sanctuary, so that we went home with ash on our foreheads—and hair, shoulders, and seat cushions.

            As I seated myself, I asked Dugger about the Thursday youth gatherings.  “It’s the fry cakes,” he called pointedly to Herman, who left off polishing the refrigerated case to join us with his own coffee.  One of the referenced fry cakes miraculously appeared on a napkin in front of me, just enough grease on the napkin to let me know it wasn’t more than 5 minutes old.  “Bergie and I always liked kids,” The Dugger began. 

“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Herman interrupted.  “That’s not it, Dugger, and you know it.”  Herman kept a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye that he paired with a habit of poking the upper arm of the person he was talking with.  “Don’t blame Bergie.  She’s put up with enough out of you, she doesn’t deserve that blame.  Just tell Sparky here the truth.”  This exchange was testimony to their long years together, and it piqued my curiosity.  “He does it,” Herman told me, “for God’s sake.  Don’t you,” he told The Dugger. 

The Dugger looked only slightly abashed.  “Herman, for a guy who oughta be working, you can sure be hard on other people.  Sparky,” he said, “it’s out of my respect for the lame questions.  If you ask me, the lamest questions are the best questions.”

God bless this man!  I had spent the morning steaming under the pressure of needing to deal with what I believed to be the lamest question in the Bible.  It was already Thursday afternoon, and I still had no sermon for Sunday, whose text was to consider the famously lame question, “Where are you staying?”  I’d distracted myself with John the Baptist’s theological cry of, “Lamb of God,” getting derailed by his needing to say it twice, on two separate days, before he got his disciples’ attention.  I imagined him shaking his bony prophetic finger at Jesus, “Lamb of God!” while a transporter beam out of a B-grade horror flick locked on the disciples, compelling them to hypnotically follow the nobody from Galilee.  Then (just like a cheesy film!) Jesus swinging around to ask what they want, because his divine radar had picked up a disturbance in his force field. The lameness of the question fit those cinematic conditions, as if they couldn’t think of anything else to say.  Like they’d left their brains in the coat room.  “Where are you staying?” 

I knew that wouldn’t preach.  Then, when things were bleakest sermonically speaking, God sent me this man who respects lame questions so much he spends one afternoon a week for twenty years respecting them.  “Lame questions are the best questions,” he says.  I could have kissed him.  When I asked what he meant, he smiled like he’d set the hook. Herman must’ve been in on it, because he snorted and did another finger poke, while Dugger said, “They’re on their feet, they’re walking.  They don’t want to stay with Jesus. They askbecause they want to know who Jesus is.”

Herman was really getting a kick out of this.  “Ain’t that the truth,” he wheezed.  “John thinks he’s explained it all by smacking a holy-smokes label on Jesus, but it takes beginner students to not buy it.  They know there’s more to it than that.” 

“Exactly!” The Dugger was triumphant.  “Isn’t that great?  You can put Jesus in his place, but you can’t leave him there.  And that’s what we’ve been doing with these kids.  What they learn in school is the American way—‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’—and they carry that out with them into life, but I think there’s more to learn than that.  I think,” and Herman did not poke him, “I think asking that lame question is the beginning of everything.”  His steady eyes held mine, waiting for my understanding to catch up.

“Come with me,” I said.  “Jesus answers them, ‘Come with me.’” 

“As if he respects them,” The Dugger said.  Now he was poking my forearm.  “As if he’s gonna let them come to the answer themselves.  He might move heaven and earth to help them find it, but he loves them enough to let them walk it themselves.”

“Me and Dugger,” Herman said.  “We were always in favor of lame questions.” 

“Sparky,” Dugger leaned close.  “Maybe the only question worth asking Jesus is that lame one, ‘Where are you staying?’ It’s not the smartest or the holiest question, but it comes of following Jesus and leads to following Jesus.  Maybe Thursdays with Herman’s fry cakes have done me more good than I needed,” he patted his ample middle, “but those kids deserve a place to ask lame questions, otherwise they’re never going to hear Jesus say, ‘Come with me.’”  He smiled crookedly.  “Donuts as a token of respect that they’re willing to ask.”

Herman balled up my napkin and swiped at a few crumbs.  He looked to me and said, “Some of these kids come from homes where a family get-together means drinking, going outside to beat each other up, then sleeping it off in the jail.  Not much ‘Lamb of God’ talk in those families.  ‘Where are you staying?’ makes more sense to them.  If those kids—and the ones who don’t feel welcome anywhere else, and even the good kids—if they’re willing to ask that lame question, and ask it in the presence of this old geezer here,” he gestured at The Dugger, “I’m good for a free donut once a week.”

The geezer in question smoothed his overalls with a mock-hurt, “Hey!”  But he was serious when he turned to me.  “Sparky, sometimes Jesus seems so far away that it takes an experienced listener to point out that he’s dying to get close.  And what I hope,” his eyes moved across the bakery and out the front door, “what I hope is that these kids will get the equipment to eventually notice Jesus on their own.  We’re taking a risk, counting on Jesus to do the heavy work.  But Herman and I figure we’ll run out of donuts before Jesus gets tired of lame questions.”

Which was pretty much the point, I thought.  Hearing the invitation and helping others hear it, coming to know Jesus by following him.  “Come and see.”  I’d never realized how open-ended that was.  It’s about as open-ended as “every Thursday after school.”  What a gift, I thought.  An open-ended invitation for all those lame questions.  “Come and see.”